Wednesday, February 6, 2008

With more and more VOIP companies offering cheap rates, the pressure was building on Indian Telecommunication Industry to match up to the people's expectations.

MTNL, India's leading telecom provider has now cut rates to Rs.1 for its Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) customers to about 100 countries such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Japan, Malaysia and Kuwait.

MTNL already provider VOIP calls at Rs. 1 to the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong. This makes MTNL the cheapest way to call almost anywhere in the world. The mobile companies offer around Rs.3-6 to most international destinations.

Rs. 1 is almost 2.5 USD cents per minute which by far the cheapest rate to call international destinations. MTNL will surely give foreign VOIP providers a run for it's money. However with increasing competition, the consumers will see more rate cuts in future. I guess we don't have to wait for too long to see 1 cent per minute calls which is about 50 paise per minute to most destinations.

This will not only make India one of the cheapest countries to call from but will put India on a global VOIP roadmap. The biggest hurdle is however the costly termination charges which needs to be iradicated by TRAI. Its time to make india about 2-3 cents per minute with low termination charges. This will not only iradicate grey market VOIP operators but in turn help local telecom providers to make significant money for increasing volume based business.

MTNL however has strange policies as part of their program and we criticised their TOS which says, SIP to SIP calls are not Free. Which is actually a joke.